INTRODUCING: WOODEN TAPE

With his second album Wool, released on God Unknown Records, Wooden Tape’s Tim Maycox turns childhood memory into mythology. Described as a “sonic photo album,” Wool drifts through 1970s Liverpool with chiming guitars, woozy synth pads, treated percussion and the warm shimmer of imagination. It’s a record steeped in folklore, family, TV theme tunes, bus rides, market trips, Zorro swords and the hazy amber glow of Ekta­chrome — a place where personal history becomes something dreamlike, cracked, and timeless.

Balancing minimal electronics with pastoral acoustic textures, Maycox moves beyond the hauntological landscapes of Music From Another Place into something more intimate, vulnerable and narrative-driven. Wool is memory as mood, nostalgia as sound design, and childhood refracted through decades of lived experience. Below, Tim Maycox walks us through the emotions, inspirations and accidents that shaped this deeply personal work.

1. Wool is described as a “sonic photo album” of your childhood in 1970s Liverpool. When you revisited these memories, what sensations or images surfaced first, and how did you translate them into sound?

I suppose they where always related to family, school and T.V. Those childhood theme tunes still spin around in my head and were my first introduction to music. My siblings were older and getting into post Punk by the end of the 70's but my musical memories are all very fuzzy felt folk or Boney M! There was that back to the land feel at the start of the 70's and it fed into a lot of kids T.V. That's why there is this big nostalgia, harking back to the likes of Bagpuss, Children of the Stones etc. I think there has been a revision of that time and a lot of people are trying to navigate the digital world in a folksy way, instead of macrame and candle making, people are 'crafting' and making DIY music.Soundwise, I was keen for it not to sound directly retro, though I did play with the idea of a disco, four to the floor beat for 1 track, as that was my first taste of pop music. In the end, I suppose it is more the instrumentation and feel of the synth pads and textures that became the sound. I was writing what felt 'right' for the titles emotionally.

2. The album blends minimal electronics, acoustic guitars and treated percussion in a way critics have called “musical hauntology.” How do you approach balancing nostalgia with experimentation in your compositions?

Music is funny, it finds it thumbprint. You could give another musician, my instruments and those titles and they would come up with a completely different sounding album. I suppose taste, experience, skill (or lack of!) all feed into the sound. My only consciously, nostalgic decision was that some of it sound vaguely like a kid's TV theme tune from the 70's. I did buy a 'flutter and wow' patch to treat parts of the album (you can hear it on 'Saturday Morning') but I didn't want to over-use it. But then a track like, 'Underneath the Weeping Willow tree', is for me pure experimentation.

I had a tape of me playing chords in my garage, with a mic'ed amp and you can hear the acoustic strum of the electric guitar, that became the backbone of a very organic track. We couldn't get rid of it, so it became part of the sound. It is far closer to ambient/post rock than anything hauntology-wise. The music is informed as much by baroque folk, ambient sound collages and library than hauntology. Going back to the acoustic guitar picking (which is always the skeletal frame of any Wooden Tape piece) I try to look to the likes of Ben Chasny, James Blackshaw or Dean McPhee as much as older heroes like John Renbourn, ISB or COB. I'm not a patch on any of them, but for me it's the feel, the influence of.

3. There’s a vivid story in the release notes — the green double-decker bus, your cousins, Zorro swords, the heat of the engine. Did specific tracks emerge directly from particular memories like that, or is Wool more of an emotional collage?

Cop out answer, a bit of both! I wrote a list of titles and added to it as I was going along. There is a very sketchy, '2 weeks in the life of' narrative to the album-though it does jump back and forth chronologically. The album is mostly memories. That idea of photos coming alive, but of course it could also be listened to as an emotional collage. I really like that actually! I am not precious about the music. When you write without lyrics, the titles become massive and tend to fill in for lyrics but even then, the music can be open to interpretation. Being 'underneath a weeping will tree' or going to 'a mobile shop' will invoke personal memories to listeners and the tracks then take on another meaning or emotion, so it becomes personal to the listener.

4. You’ve moved from the world of Music From Another Place into something more personal and autobiographical. How did writing Wool differ creatively or emotionally from your previous album?

Instrumentation wise, I don't think it is a massive leap. I think 'Wool' has more 'bits' to it, they aren't all necessarily tunes like say 'Birds' or Geodesic Eric' off the first album where, so in that respect it is more of a mood piece. I wanted it to be slightly more structured percussively and the use of sound bites makes it sound different as well as supporting the narrative. There was perhaps, a bit more of writing to order than on the first album, where a lot of the titles came afterwards. You do become aware of your catalogue though and I wanted it to have pieces in the style of the first album as well as evolving pieces.

5. The album navigates the moment your family moved and you became a “Wool,” leaving Liverpool behind. What does that transition represent for you now, and how does it resonate through the record’s themes and textures?

Well it kind of deals with loss in a funny way. The 70's, childhood and living in Liverpool. We only moved 'over the water' to the Wirral but it was a big leap, location and emotion wise. All the family still live in Liverpool. I remember when we first moved and my Mum could not believe ladies were cycling around with shopping baskets with loafs in them. And of course there was the beach! I think the album can be musically quite sad, Alpine Pop! is very emotive for me.

I actually used to work with a guy at the Liverpool 'Phil', whose first job was working on the Alpine Van in Norris Green in the 70's, so he more than likely delivered to our house! Richie's voice message (another ex-Philharmonica), lifted this piece into somewhere else and made it everything it now is. These memories have become my personal folklore, everyone has an album like this in them. I still live on the Wirral but still go over to 'town' I get an enormous buzz from taking my daughters over to Liverpool and them, knowing there way around. Anyway, 'Wools' are truly woolybacks-more Lancashire, if anything I'm a plazzy (plastic) scouser, though I think of myself as a plazzy-wool!